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Windows 10: Can Microsoft Get It Right This Time?
An anonymous reader shares this article about what Microsoft needs to accomplish with Windows 10 in order to make gains in the mobile market and everywhere else. "Later this week Microsoft will provide more details of Windows 10, most likely focusing on how the new operating system will look and feel on smartphones and tablets. According to Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft is likely to unveil a version of Windows 10 that's expected to work on Windows Phones and smaller Windows tablets running ARM and perhaps Intel processors. Microsoft will be hoping that by making it easier for developers to build for tablets and smartphones it can take some of its dominance of the desktop world and port that to the mobile world. That may help a bit, but will not in itself create the breakthrough that Microsoft wants: when it comes to mobile, Microsoft's Windows Phone is still a distant third in a two-horse race."
They took the Windows 8 'core', upgraded it a bit, rejiggered some window effects, and re-added the desktop as primary for a desktop/laptop experience.
The only thing people hated about Windows 8 on a PC was the interface. If this gets rid of that it will not be as bad as Windows 8 which means they did something right...
It's better on the inside, especially the DLL sharing. (Rather than each running app having a separate in-memory copy of a DLL, now if separate apps have the same DLL dependency, then there's only one copy in memory. Probably my favorite feature of Windows 8)
But the interface still sucks. I've used 8.1 as my primary desktop OS for almost a year now (Stock install, no Start Menu third party add-ons), and while it's a solid OS, there's still so much missing from the Metro interface.
Recently used documents is the thing I miss the most.
And just exploring through the tree-based Start Menu is something I really miss. I end up with so much stuff installed I forget some of it. Would occasionally just surf thru the Start menu to re-discover stuff. But with 8.1, if you don't remember it, you're not going to find it. Sure you can go page by page through all the listed stuff, but that's far more inefficient than being able to walk through a tree-based menu.
MS has had this weird obsession with a single OS for all devices since forever. The first incarnations of Windows phones had the XP desktop crammed on them. The biggest impact they had was to keep the smartphone market small and dysfunctional until Apple and Google came along. Now they are trying the opposite tack and cramming a mobile OS onto the desktop and are wondering why people are staying away in droves.
Until they give up this obsession and make a mobile OS and a separate desktop OS, they are going to stay stuck.
That they finally start with a package manager (or package manager manager) : OneGet which will integrate with Chocolatey is a big "right" in my book. As a Linux user for a decade, one of the strangest things in Windows-land has been that users still need to go to web-pages and download installers manually - which in it self poses a security risk since the average user might not verify that the web page is genuine. With an efficient software management (keep everything up-to-date) and installation eco-system, we can hope that a lot of the crapware littering download sites will go extinct (I have had to clean up various computers for friends and family running Windows - those running Linux did not need much support apart from the occasional upgrade). As a GUI front-end I find Chocolatey Explorer user friendly enough, but other options will most likely pop up later.
Yeah, no, not really, though. Most consumers are a lot less idealistic than you seem to think. Even most of the guys who scream "this time they've gone too far! fuck 'em" eventually find a rationalization to stay with Windows.
The reasons for buying Windows 10 are pretty much the following:
- 'It was bundled with the computer'
- 'I needed the newest version of Windows to run x'
- 'They told me I should't use XP anymore and this was the Windows they sold.'
And then there's also what seems to be the largest part of consumers: the part that actually likes Windows 8.
Just throw classic shell on it, 8.1 is way better than 7. XP was great in it's day - as windows goes - It's day was just stretched a bit longer than it should have because Vista.
Not quite. Win8 (and by extension) Windows 10, still has problems where previously unified interfaces for controlling system behavior have been split between Metro/Modern apps and traditional windows.
One example: in Win7 I click the network icon in the notifications area and a small window pops up with the connections; I can then right-click a connection and select Status for information on what IP/DNS is currently assigned or Properties to get to its security information.
Clicking the network icon on Win10 does the same thing as Win8: giant Metro panel covering a large portion of the screen, most of it wasted in "Airplane Mode" that I have no use for, and right-clicking the connection only has options that are more at home in a cellphone than in a desktop OS: estimated data usage, metered connection, forget this network. Clicking "View Connection Settings" opens another Metro-style "PC Settings" window that is designed for touch, so OS standards like right-clicking don't work.
http://i.imgur.com/8Csqe77.png
In short, it's still trying to integrate two different UI designs, and it still doesn't work. It's not as terrible as Win8 at it, but it's still in plenty of places to be annoying. It's also very inconsistent in what gets a Metro panel and what doesn't.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Why should I waste my time with Windows 10?
Why? Well, if you want to run Windows Applications :-)
And it's Windows 7, I haven't even looked at Windows 8.
Short Answer: No, you should not upgrade.
Long Answer: If you're interested in kernel side stuff, like most OS releases kernel changes are incremental. Here are a few :-
0) Secure Boot - With a chained OS boot you can be sure (well, its microsoft :P ) that your kernel mode components have been cryptographically verified. IIRC they started using this 10 years ago with the xbox 360. Ofcource the 360 security was promptly broken after people figured out how to patch the firmware, but I still think it is a nice-to-have feature.
1) Client side Hyper-V runs all OSs, including host OS on a thin hypervisor with minimal performance impact (Intels SLAT tech)
2) Native USB 3.0 , I've found that on Windows 7 third party usb 3.0 drivers are a hit/miss in terms of maximum performance.
3) Stricter LFH (Low fragmentation heap) Internals (guard pages, less determinism, etc) -Result - You're better guarded against buggy drivers and potentially malicious kernel mode components.
4) Newer API for driver mem alloc (NonPagedPoolNx) - IIRC windows kernel components have switched to using this. Result - Stability boost, Security boost - all kernel memory objects are in non excutable mem, etc
5) Uses Intels new-ish RDRAND instruction for a higher quality random number gen as the basis for ASLR
Kinda right, kinda wrong...
See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/arc...
It needs to be smooth, it needs to be organized. The OS needs to stay out of the way and not over-complicate things. We are there to run applications, not Windows. Windows needs to run and organize files and applications, that's it.
A simple file copy shouldn't take several minutes to start. When I say copy, start copying! We need Windows, not tiles. Windows is the name of the OS after all, and IMO the Windows paradigm still works. They need to preserve backward compatibility except when it would too badly affect performance or security. And I don't think it would or else MS themselves wouldn't be recommending DOSBOX to run 16-bit applications.
Betteridge gets credit because of Stigler's law.
The Start menu really never went away in Windows 8.x. It was hidden. Open File Explorer. Under View make sure Hidden Items is checked. Then navigate to Program Data\Microsoft\Windows. There you'll see the Start Menu folder. Right mouse click on it and select Pin to Start. You now have the classic start menu tree available on the Start screen. Or you could drag it to the desktop and select Create Shortcut Here. It's been this way since Windows 8 went gold.
Especially when the question is THIS level of stupid, as unlike Windows 8 all the beta testers (including myself) are giving Windows 10 praise and saying its gonna be the next XP/7 in terms of popularity.
Honestly the only way I can see them royally fucking it up at this late stage of the game is 1.- They refuse to sell actual copies but instead make it a subscription only like Office 365. The odds of that? EXTREMELY doubtful due to the amount of backlash. People don't mind paying a subscription for a piece of software they can take or leave, but to have your PC lock you out if you don't whip out your CC on a regular interval? It would make MSBob look like a hit because folks would stay away in droves. The only other way I can see them fucking it up is 2.- they jack up the price and charge some insanely high price like $200-$300 a copy. Odds? Not only is this very doubtful but more likely we'll see the opposite, with MSFT selling some "Home Basic" or "Home with Bing" version for a low cost, say $25-$40, so they can take back the low end from Chromebooks and then sell editions with more corporate features for a higher cost.
Since taking over we've seen no indication that Nadella is anything like Balmer, so far he's been pretty good about giving the customers what they want so I see no reason to think this won't be the case with Windows 10. And despite all the doom and gloom I could see Windows Phone grabbing some serious share as they seem to have one BIG fucking advantage over Google and that is SUPPORT. Windows Phone 7 still gets security patches and Nadella has stated repeatedly that anybody that gets a Windows 8 phone can upgrade to Windows 10 for free. After Google gave everyone not running 4.4 the finger by dropping support and refusing to patch an exploit that is already being used ion the wild? I can see support become a selling point, especially if MSFT advertises it well so the public knows that new Windows Phone they buy today isn't gonna be left swinging in the breeze next year.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.